Improving labour market integration of young people

This webinar has now ended. You can find the recording as well the main learnings on the article here.

On 19 December from 14:00 to 15:30 CET, the Interreg Europe Policy Learning Platform is organising a webinar on improving young people's labour market integration. 

Youth unemployment rates above 10% in most European countries and over 20% in 10 member states. The objective is not just to provide employment, but to help young people find jobs that correspond to their skills and aspirations, with decent pay and working conditions, and professional and personal growth perspectives.

Different policies can contribute to this:

• Training and education to match skills with job demand
• Apprenticeships offering paid work experience and employer connections
• Entrepreneurship support to help youth create businesses
• Mobility schemes to gain experience in other parts of Europe

The webinar will explore various strategies to help young people define career goals, secure their first job, experience different work environments, understand professional norms, and explore entrepreneurship.

Part of the challenge is to engage with youth meaningfully. This presupposes that existing obstacles to labour market integration of different categories of youth are identified. It may be necessary to consider ways to make professions facing recruitment challenges more appealing to young people. Furthermore, communication methods and tools must be adapted to target groups.

What you can expect

• Keynote speech by Gustavs M. Upmanis on how to enhance labour market integration based on experience from Latvia and other European countries, RuralYouthFuture project.

How to jointly mobilise youth, youth organisations and companies in efforts to enhance labour market integration? Gustavs M. Upmanis will share lessons learnt from designing and operating an online skills acquisition and job finding platform that targets young people.  

• Presentation by Simona Knavs on the Vocational Maturity Self-Assessment tool by Youth in Transition Erasmus+ project, atWork4NEETS project 

The Self-Assessment Tool helps structure dialogues between young persons and professionals. It is particularly useful for professionals working with young people who are not experts in labour market integration and vocational support, e.g. teachers.  

• Presentation by Tjaša Perković on the AGRO FI Young – Microcredits in agriculture for young people, Microfuture project (TBC)

By providing small-scale loans with accessible terms, microcredit enables aspiring entrepreneurs to overcome initial financial hurdles that might otherwise hinder their ambitions. This initiative exemplifies how it can be tailored to meet the needs and aspirations of young entrepreneurs.

Register below